I think about this shit all the damn time. I was a big WWII nerd as a kid (oh who am I kidding, I still am) and then 9/11 happened and I watched them try to play it off as being as significant as Pearl Harbor (it would end up being as large or even bigger, but just because of what we made of it, not because of the substance and aftermath of the actual attack) and I remember sitting there as a teenager and thinking "wait this doesn't feel right."
Then we declare war on terror and start a forever war. Yet, we have no victory gardens. Hell, the price of gas spikes, but there is no attempt to ration it. There's no shortages of items in stores, even the rare items are fulled stocked, to say nothing of the common household staples. America was the eye of the hurricane. Inside, everything was placid. Again, I was watching this unfold and I just had this thought humming in my head insisting "wait, this doesn't feel right."
America waging war now versus America waging war in WWII is like comparing a sport hunter to a subsistence hunter. Yeah we're both shooting at the deer but modern America will drag it to a truck and throw it in the bed and drive home while America under FDR would have eaten the organs and started drying the lean cuts to last the winter.
It was really weird an alienating. I kept saying things like "if I didn't watch TV I wouldn't even know we were at war" because it was true! The most tangible thing I experienced was dealing with increased traffic because the W Bush administration closed down lots of smaller military bases and consolidated them in larger "Joint Bases" and I happened to live close enough to one of those that the freeway would get clogged to shit during rush hour because thousands of troops were getting into their Dodge Chargers at the same time.
I made this point before. People love to point to the WWII generation as being the greatest generation or “when men were men”.
Seeing them flip out over not be able to drink every weekend is hilarious when they invoke that generation all the time.
There aren’t many moments in American history that I feel proud of but the Great Depression and WWII era when people understood the danger of fascism and organized militant labor unions during the Great Depression really make me proud.
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I think about this shit all the damn time. I was a big WWII nerd as a kid (oh who am I kidding, I still am) and then 9/11 happened and I watched them try to play it off as being as significant as Pearl Harbor (it would end up being as large or even bigger, but just because of what we made of it, not because of the substance and aftermath of the actual attack) and I remember sitting there as a teenager and thinking "wait this doesn't feel right."
Then we declare war on terror and start a forever war. Yet, we have no victory gardens. Hell, the price of gas spikes, but there is no attempt to ration it. There's no shortages of items in stores, even the rare items are fulled stocked, to say nothing of the common household staples. America was the eye of the hurricane. Inside, everything was placid. Again, I was watching this unfold and I just had this thought humming in my head insisting "wait, this doesn't feel right."
America waging war now versus America waging war in WWII is like comparing a sport hunter to a subsistence hunter. Yeah we're both shooting at the deer but modern America will drag it to a truck and throw it in the bed and drive home while America under FDR would have eaten the organs and started drying the lean cuts to last the winter.
It was really weird an alienating. I kept saying things like "if I didn't watch TV I wouldn't even know we were at war" because it was true! The most tangible thing I experienced was dealing with increased traffic because the W Bush administration closed down lots of smaller military bases and consolidated them in larger "Joint Bases" and I happened to live close enough to one of those that the freeway would get clogged to shit during rush hour because thousands of troops were getting into their Dodge Chargers at the same time.
I made this point before. People love to point to the WWII generation as being the greatest generation or “when men were men”.
Seeing them flip out over not be able to drink every weekend is hilarious when they invoke that generation all the time.
There aren’t many moments in American history that I feel proud of but the Great Depression and WWII era when people understood the danger of fascism and organized militant labor unions during the Great Depression really make me proud.
deleted by creator